February 21
Like religious freedom? Wear ashes on Wednesday!
By Morgan GuytonThere’s been a lot of talk about religious freedom over the past few weeks. Whatever side of the story you believe, Christianity has taken a hit both from people who oppose it and people who exploit it. I want to propose something that those of us who love Jesus can do to represent Him in a way that will assert our religious freedom without oppressing other people.
Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, a 40-day period of penitent reflection in which we remember our sins and our need of Christ’s redemption. It’s a long-standing tradition in Catholic and many Protestant denominations to have your forehead marked with a cross of ashes both as a reminder to be humble since your sins nailed the Son of God to a tree and as a public witness showing the world that you are a sinner dependent on God.
If there ever were a time in our country when Christians needed to put ashes on our foreheads, it is now.
In Ezekiel 9:4, one of the scriptural sources for Ash Wednesday, the voice of God says: “Go throughout the city of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in it.” I know we all have different culprits we accuse of flushing our country down the toilet, but I’m sure we can agree that it’s appropriate to mourn the state of our country.
I strongly believe that wearing ashes on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday is the best way to 1) assert our religious freedom as citizens and 2) remember that our call as Christians is to be witnesses first and foremost. God doesn’t build his kingdom through petitions or angry signs or blogosphere comment wars; He has always built it through the patient witness that can only occur face to face in personal relationships.
There are people with whom you work that may have negative stereotypes about Christians, but they know that you are a decent person. They need to be reminded that you are who they’re bashing if they bash Christians (as long as you’re not the reason they bash Christians). It’s a lot easier to hate people you don’t make jokes with on a daily basis. It’s not going to hurt anybody else for you to have ashes on your forehead. Nobody can say you’re cramming your religion down their throat. If the ashes make you self-conscious, all the better. If you don’t have anything intelligent to say, your witness may actually be more powerful.
Recall the words of St. Paul in 1 Cor. 2:1-3: “When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling.”
Maybe it’s the case that you’ve been a royal pain to your colleagues and you need those ashes to humble you and remind you of who you have been representing every day. Maybe people need to see you mourning your own sin. Of course, this only has meaning if it’s accompanied by “fruit worthy of repentance” (Matt. 3:8).
I realize some people will think this is very simple-minded, but I honestly think that if enough Christians are willing to represent Christ with ashes on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday, it could have a tremendously positive impact on the religious climate in our country. I can’t see how having ashes on your forehead could offend anyone, but if they do lash out at you, then treat them with such love and dignity that they will be ashamed and repent.
1 Peter 4:16 says: “If you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name.” Whatever else is true, people across our nation need to see Christians wearing a sign of humility and weakness to counteract the stereotypes that we are an arrogant, powerful people. I pray and hope that you will join us in this simple, non-confrontational means of bearing witness.
Morgan Guyton is the associate pastor of Burke (Va.) United Methodist Church. His personal blog is called “Mercy Not Sacrifice.” This blog post is provided thanks to our partnership with Red Letter Christians.
Comments
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As a Catholic, I thank you.
Let us all find our unity in Him and in His will that we be free to decide what His will is for us.
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Amen.
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Thank you, Reverend Guyton, for your encouragement.
I'm on my way now, to getting my ashes. They will be worn all day.
Bless you!
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As a Catholic, I will be receiving ashes tonight, along with my children and grandchildren. Bless you, Pastor Guyton!
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Thank you for your kind words Pastor Guyton. I am proud to be wearing my ashes now! Let's live in solidarity as conscientious human beings.
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I find progressive Anabaptist theology interesting because there is increased thinking to discard the blood atonement of Jesus on the cross which the Bible teaches. Now the same progressive thinking encourages the observing of Lent and applying ashes to the forehead which is not Bible teaching but rather it is denominational religious teaching.
If ashes on one’s forehead are so important, can I simply get some off my burn pile, stand in front of the mirror and apply them to my forehead? Do I then tell my wife I can’t shower for 40 days until Easter to keep the ashes on my forehead? For people who have no burn pile, why can’t they buy ashes at Wal-Mart to replace the ashes when they are washed off?
If this is so important for my non-confrontational witness, I should permanently tattoo a cross on my forehead that will remain for all to see until I am put in a casket?
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Dale, the theological ferment within Anabaptism around "the blood atonement of Jesus" is a positive development because in its more courageous manifestations, it opens our hearts to the first century power of Jesus' sacrifice.
Within the early church, the cross was world-changing, forever dividing history into the before and after. The blood of Jesus disarmed the powers and authorities and showed them to be perpetrators of deception and violence. The blood of Jesus made a public spectacle of those powers and authorities, leading them as captives in a humiliating perp walk, forever defeating their claims of legitimacy and entitlement.
That's how the church in Colossae spoke of it, according to the second chapter of Paul's letter.
Now, however, the blood of Jesus has been domesticated, reduced to an abstract and metaphysical belief that has little power in the world in which we live. Indeed, this narrow, constricted understanding of the blood of Jesus has nothing but praise for those who pillage the earth to satsify their lust for money and power.
So let us thank God for the ferment in our midst around the blood of Jesus. It is a sign of the work of the Spirit among us!
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Berry, Permit me some comments on Colossians 2:15. There are people who take the first term in this verse, apekdusamenos ‘strip off, disarm’ as a participle in the middle voice, which it is, to have the sense ‘he stripped himself of’, or something similar. It seems to me that this is used to support the Christus Victor view of the atonement, that Christ secured a victory over Satan and cosmic powers by his resurrection. The analysis takes the middle voice of the participle as a reflexive middle – he did this and it had such and such an effect on himself. However, I believe that the middle voice could be taken in another way, as an intensive middle. In that case, the participial phrase would have the sense ‘he disarmed the authorities and powers’, and this would be followed by the main verb ‘made a show, disgraced them’. The participial phrase could then be taken to repeat what Paul wrote in the previous verse: ‘he himself took it (the ordinances that stood against us), nailing it to the cross.’ The idea is that by dying on the cross, and thereby forgiving us for our sins, Christ took the law of ordinances away (from those who believe) as something whereby Satan and his powers could accuse us of sin. Thus, he won a victory over the forces of evil that would accuse us, and we also have that victory. That view of the atonement can still lead to something that can change the world, and can (and does) lead to a radical life that is different from the ways of the world. People who accept that work of Christ become people who are willing to die for their faith; they change the world through upright living and proclaiming the gospel. Paul writes about this in the passage on the armor of God in Ephesians 6. I think it was demonstrated in history in the time of the Reformation, but especially in the revival that came to England through especially the ministry of the Wesleys. One historian (I can’t tell you who) wrote that England was spared a blood bath by the Wesleys. The social situation was such that there would have been lots of violence in England, but because of the changes that came from the revival that followed the Wesley’s preaching, including Methodism, England was changed.
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Daniel, thank you for your reply.
I am not competent to fully follow your analysis. But as I understand your comment, the heart of it is this: "That view of the atonement can still lead to something that can change the world, and can (and does) lead to a radical life that is different from the ways of the world."
Yes, that sounds promising.
I also note this: "Christ took the law of ordinances away (from those who believe) as something whereby Satan and his powers could accuse us of sin." How you and I understand that sentence appears to be the nub upon which we turn.
The Christian religion would give that sentence a metaphysical meaning. That is, it would say your words describe a transaction that happened outside of earth's time and space to relieve us of a burden that threatens our immortality. When I appropriate that transaction, it would say, I will receive the desire to walk the Jesus Way.
While such an understanding has had power, as you note, I perceive that power to be waning.
More enduring is the power that the faithfulness of Jesus brings into earth's time and space. It is the power of enemy love, of self-sacrifice, of seeing the work of God in every man and woman, of shalom. It is the energy we feel when liberated from the lie that greed and violence rule. It is the freedom of being liberated from the yoke of sin and oppression, whether the kind we cultivate in our blindness or the kind imposed upon us by Wall Street and the Pentagon.
God in Christ has exposed the helpless addiction of these so-called powers and shown how utterly disqualified they are to be our saviors. The human ones are the heirs of Christ, fully qualified to bear in our many defeats the victory of Jesus.
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Berry, I may not fully understand your response, but my reply is according to the way I took it: the transaction to which I would refer very definitely took place in time and space: it took place when Christ died on the cross. The transaction also took place in heaven, but it was when Christ died on the cross that the atonement was made for our sins. I can perhaps say more as you reply.
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Berry and Daniel:
Doesn't the fact that there's such wide disagreement on how the "atonement" works (or even what it is) argue against its validity?
Throughout history there have been several theories to describe what the atonement means. Yet they cannot all be true, because they describe different processes by which salvation is made available. So, if only one of the atonement theories is right, what happens to all the people of good will down through the centuries who had the misfortune to put their hopes and trust in one of the wrong ones? They are doomed, I tell you ... DOOMED!
Does that make any sense? I think not. If belief in something called "atonement" were really a crucial factor in God's plan for us, then wouldn't God have laid it out more clearly, in simple terms, easy enough to be grasped by even the simple-minded? (Honestly, I consider myself a half-way intelligent person, but the atonement never made a bit of sense to me, even when I was a youngster and really motivated to understand it.)
Today, of course, I'm not motivated to comprehend it at all, because I recognize that the atonement is, in reality, a man-made doctrine, created for the purpose of excluding non-believers from the church club. Jesus himself, the real Jesus, the Jewish Rabbi, would be shocked and offended by the notion that Yahweh made child sacrifice the centerpiece of the cosmic plan of salvation.
Once one is on the outside of the church clubhouse, it becomes much easier to perceive the truth: that God is always compassionate, always merciful, and always forgiving. Thus, no one is rejected, not now, not ever. And anything that calls those divine qualities into question (like the notion we have to do or believe stuff to earn God's acceptance) is simply mistaken.
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Charlie, we've been studying Galatians in our Sunday school class. There we find that the author, Paul, largely agrees with you. The faithfulness of Jesus has demonstrated and affirmed the promise of God: each of is worthy, each of us is free of condemnation.
Many would say that's the end of the matter. If I'm at peace about the after-life, they seem to believe, what else is there to say?
As I read the New Testament, the first followers of Jesus did not think that to be "the end of the matter" because they understood God in Christ to be changing the world and they wanted to be agents of that transformation. So as a tiny group of dissidents living within an overwhelming and consensus defining empire, they struggled to fathom and appropriate, as we sometimes do here, the power of the cross to transform the earth.
For me, that's what is at stake in discussions of "atonement". It's not nearly as religious as it sounds.
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